Honesty is the Best Policy {Comic Edition}

Chapter 45: Mission Accomplished...?

"Give me back my crown."
Fiona just stared back as said crown slowly slid off the top of her head and hit the ground with an audible clink. Hearts thought to quickly pull the throne back closed. It was a lot heavier than it looked when Scourge had lifted it.
Immediately, Zone cops poured in from the entrance and surrounded the group. Honest stepped out from her hiding spot and watched uselessly. Shadow stood up, revealing himself as well. Mephiles, curiously, was nowhere to be found, and he remained to be nowhere even when one of the officers pulled them aside and opened up a portal back to No Zone. The cop lifted their visor and revealed their identity as none other than the one who had sent them here, Zonic the Zone Cop.
Hearts looked from Zonic to Scourge, who was still Super, trying to piece this all together. "Are you… another Scourge?" she asked after a while.
"Yes," Zonic answered, rolling his eyes and adjusting his footing in a way that suggested he was annoyed at their lack of urgency. "Another Sonic to be specific." He turned to Honest and nodded his head. "I would like to thank you on the behalf of Warden Zobotnik and all Zone cops for your bravery on this mission."
Honest couldn't help but worry for Super Scourge as he was twitching all over with a vacant stare while he stood and waited to head through the portal. When the Zone police first arrived, one of the officers used a strange gun-like device to launch a Control Collar at Super Scourge's throat, which it then wrapped around and clicked closed. According to Zonic, it was just a precaution so that Scourge wouldn't lose control and start destroying his own castle, not to mention possibly extinguishing lives at the same time.
Zonic noticed Honest's troubled glances over towards the glowing purple hedgehog and narrowed his eyes. "He's fine. You're used to Prime Sonic's transformations. He'll come down in a moment. Come on," Zonic said, stepping through the portal and expecting the others to do the same.
"'Come down'?" Shadow echoed questioningly as soon as the Zone cop was gone. Honest shrugged, grabbed Super Scourge's hand, and walked on through with said superpowered hedgy in tow. Shadow was going to follow her, but instead a hand tapped his arm, stopping him in his tracks. "Huh?"
"Shadow," Hearts said, pulling her hand away fast as if touching his arm had caused her physical pain. "I'm coming with you guys, right?"
"I suppose so. If you want to, that is," he replied. He watched as his best friend's newfound twin glanced around her nervously as if afraid something might jump out and attack them. "There's nothing out there for you," Shadow reminded her. "We saw the state of the city. The best thing you can do is to at least come to No Zone with us. Then, maybe the Zone Police can find you a safe place to stay."
Hearts didn't look any more assured by this, but she gave in anyway and turned back to the portal. "Fine then. Let's go."
"What is taking those two so long?" Zonic asked, impatiently tapping his foot. An image of an annoyed SatAM Sonic tapping his foot and going "I'm waaaiitiiinng" in Jaleel White's voice came to Honest’s mind. Excluding looks, Zonic and Sonic's similarities were sometimes very tough to notice. Honest wondered if Zonic was suppressing his true self or if he and Sonic really were just that different.
Immediately after he expressed his annoyance, Shadow and Hearts finally came through the portal. Hearts' eyes grew as she looked around the new space, though she wasn’t on the same plane as everyone else. “What is this place? And why am I on… the wall?” she asked.
“This is No Zone HQ, specifically, the Portal Room,” Zonic explained. He passed her a spatial stabilizer. “Put that around your wrist.” He walked out in front of them and made a beeline towards the door. He didn’t even give Hearts any time to look around this new room she found herself in. As soon as she was on the correct axis, she had to run to catch up with Zonic.
The machines around them made a quiet hum, almost like refrigerators or air conditioners or something. According to what Zonic had called the room, “the Portal Room”, Hearts could probably assume these were portal generating devices. However, judging by how quickly Zonic shot for the exit, Honest guessed there wasn’t enough time to explain it to her if she was confused.
“Zonest asked me to bring you guys to her office immediately after Fiona was apprehended,” Zonic explained. He opened the door and stood outside, waiting for everyone to leave so he could lock the door behind them. When Shadow passed by, he opened his mouth to say something to Zonic, but Honest pushed her way between them.
“We can find our way there,” Honest told the Zone cop. “We’ve been back and forth to her room a couple of times now.”
He acted like them offering to walk there by themselves was an insult, pausing to look at them with disbelief. However, the expression immediately disappeared as he put his key away and opened the door back up.
“Fine then,” Zonic replied. “I need to get back to work anyway.” He looked at Scourge. “Whatever you do, don’t leave here until I or someone else tells you you can.” He shut the door behind him.
Immediately, Hearts’s simple curiosity about where she was seemed to be lost forever. “Who does he think he is, telling us we can’t leave?” She turned to Honest. “What’s going on?”
“Our plan worked. Fiona was arrested and now we’re off to see our big sis in her office,” Honest told Hearts plainly, catching her up.
“All those… people showing up… That was our plan? And… ‘big sis’? ‘Our big sis’? What are you talking about?”
“You’ll see,” Honest told her, beginning to walk as Scourge and Shadow were out ahead of them, the prior floating and the latter skating, heading towards Zonest’s room. “But yeah, those people? Those were Zone cops. They’re sort of like an inter-universal police force keeping the multiverse in check, so your world, my world included.” Hearts nodded silently. “This is their base. The different gravities are a security measure since it’s also a prison, er, connected to a prison.” Honest scratched the side of her face with a finger. “Our plan… or my plan… was exactly what had happened except, well, it happened ahead of schedule. But, maybe it was for the best.” When Hearts tilted her head to the side, Honest continued her lengthy explanation. “I told Zonic to send his guys in after a week.” Honest pursed her lips in an angry manner, resembling an irritated monkey who felt slighted after not receiving his two o’clock banana. “That was not a week.” Her expression brightened again, and she looked somewhat hopeful. “But like I said, maybe it was for the best. I didn’t expect Scourge to go Super afterall.” Arriving in front of Zonest's door, Shadow was the one to knock.
"Come in!" came Zonest's muffled voice from within. Opening the door and filing into the room, the group found the Bookkeeper of All Realities at the far end of her room, hanging a painting of Honest and Hearts on the wall next to a collection of other artwork. She was balanced atop a blue stepladder which shook precariously as she waved hello. "Fiona's all taken care of, I guess?" If what had been learned in chapter 34 still held true, Zonest didn’t really need to ask such a thing. She already knew, but whatever.
Zonest began to cross the room, but stopped and patted the top of the plush loveseat in the middle of the room. “Scourge, feel free to lay down, okay? I’ll put on some coffee.” She continued on and stopped by a small, white, and plastic coffee maker sitting on the long table behind her desk. She put in a filter, dumped a couple scoops of coffee grounds out of a jar into said filter, and pressed the button, apparently having already filled the reservoir with water in advance.
Scourge did what she said and went to lie down. Shadow sat down in one of the chairs, letting out an audible “oomph” as, evidently, he was exhausted from standing so long. Honest gestured for Hearts to sit down as well, but she shook her head firmly in response.
“No,” she told her. “I’m fine.” She sounded solemn as she said this, definitely not fine. Honest just shrugged and sat down herself instead.
Before long, the scent of freshly brewed coffee fully permeated the air of the room… and, perhaps, beyond. The door opened suddenly, no knocking beforehand or anything.
Zonest began laughing. “Wow! That didn’t take you too long!”
Then, there, standing before them, was the missing piece to this “No Zone” puzzle, Zhadow the Zone Cop. He was standing in the doorway with a bit of a slouch. "You're using the extra strong coffee I bought. I could smell it five rooms over."
Shadow, who had been given a plastic sandwich bag of grinds, stopped chewing with his fingers in his mouth. Now he knew the feeling Honest had felt when meeting Zonest for the first time the other day. This was what it was like to meet your twin- no, your clone. It was different from how it had felt to encounter the Shadow Androids in Iron Jungle and definitely different from how it had felt to meet Frank some chapters ago. Zhadow looked down at his Mobius equivalent sitting in one of his co-worker's plush chairs with a calm gaze, completely contrasting Shadow's bewildered stare as he tried to decide how to act or feel.
"Nice to finally meet you, Shadow Prime. I'm Officer Zhadow," he greeted, nodding politely. He was wearing the Zone cops' usual uniform without the helmet, identical to Zonic's attire. If it wasn't for that, there would be zero ways to tell the two striped hedgehogs apart.
"Same to you," was all Shadow knew to say. Zhadow turned to Zonest with a hand now resting on his right hip.
"I bought that coffee with the intention that we would be the only ones to drink it. I didn't buy it for the whole force," Zhadow complained, a vein visible on his forehead.
"But this is a special occasion," Zonest argued. "I'm hosting two Primes and two Antis today. And try not to talk too loudly; Scourge is powering down right now on my sofa."
Zhadow rolled his eyes and then glanced at Honest and Hearts one at a time. "Besides Scourge, none of you have visited No Zone HQ yet. This is your first time, am I correct?"
Honest felt that the answer was being directed at her for some reason, so she responded. "We were here three or so days ago to pick up Scourge. We then spent the next few days trekking through Moebius to confront Fiona at the Castle and, well, here we are."
"And you're…?"
"Honest Prime," Honest answered. She smiled and swished her tail happily. "Pleased to meet you!"
He didn't look impressed and moved his eyes to the Honest with the tri-colored hair standing awkwardly beside her. "And is this the Anti-Honest?"
"Hearts," Hearts said. Her expression looked especially stormy right now.
Honest tilted her head, concern subtracting from her otherwise positively optimistic expression. "Are you alright?"
Hearts then gave her an incredibly dangerous expression that said "I will destroy you for asking such a question." She was just concerned! Could she not just be concerned for her own doppelganger?
"N-Nevermind then," Honest stuttered. Her eyes darted around the room. “Could I have some coffee now?”
As Zonest poured her Prime self a cup of the warm, delicious beverage, Zhadow peered over at his Prime self once more, this time with curiosity. “Are those… coffee grinds?”
“Yup,” Shadow confirmed, tossing a pinch of them into his mouth.
“Don’t you think that’s kind of… juvenile?”
Shadow spit out a cloud of coffee dust. “PFFFT- No!” Immediately after exclaiming “no,” he thought about what his look-alike might be thinking. “Uh… I mean, yeah, it’s kind of silly, but…”
Honest got her cup of coffee but didn’t take a sip of it right away, instead staring into it like she expected something to come out of it... or go in it. Zonest reached into the tiny fridge sitting below the table with the coffee maker on it and pulled something out.
“Since we’re the same person, I was thinking you might want some of this,” she told her, shaking the carton of half n’ half she had just pulled out. Honest’s face brightened up immediately, and her mouth formed into a cat smile.
A loud grunt resounded from the sofa, and a hand rose up at about the same time. Zonest giggled. “Don’t worry, Scourge. I’ll get you a cup, too!”
Zhadow glared daggers at the back of the sofa as Scourge’s gloved hand fell back down rather weakly. “That’s Scourge? Zonic told me he went Super.”
“He wasn’t lying,” Zonest told him, rolling her eyes. “Though, judging by the lack of a glow over there, it seems he’s finally powered down.”
Zonest had poured a cup for herself and was standing there smelling of it as she narrowed her eyes at Zhadow. “Hearts, you want some coffee?”
“No thanks,” Hearts said, walking around the sofa to sit next to Scourge.
“Zhadow?” Zonest placed a mug on the table and stepped aside to let him pour his own cup. However, he didn’t move an inch, instead crossing his arms and redirecting his glare towards Zonest.
“Zonest,” he said seriously. “He can’t turn Super unless he has Anarchy beryl. That means it’s somewhere in the Castle, right?”
Honest looked up at Zonest with a panicked look. Zonest sipped her coffee. “I-It is,” she answered. “We’re not gonna confiscate it, are we?”
Zhadow sighed. “No, removing it from that world would only cause an imbalance. It’s a natural thing, you know. It’s not like the Phantom Ruby.”
“Oh, yeah. Speaking of the Phantom Ruby,” Honest said suddenly, a smile coming back to her face after she found that she didn’t need to be worried about protecting Scourge’s secret stash anymore. Zonest’s, Zhadow’s, and Shadow’s attentions all shifted to her. “Fiona had the real Ruby, so the one you guys have here already is just a prototype. What is your policy on that?”
Zhadow thought for a moment. “Well, they’re creations of your world’s Doctor Eggman, so I guess we’ll just continue to hold onto them.”
"You guess?" Honest asked, sounding angry.
"Well, I mean, in the end what happens to the Rubies is up to Warden Zobotnik. He was the one who wanted to take the fake Ruby and imprison that Infinite guy here in the first place," Zhadow told her, regarding her with a dubious stare. "What would you prefer to happen to them?"
Honest sipped her coffee and narrowed her eyes at the crown molding as if judging its craftsmanship. "I dunno, them to be put in a box locked tight with a dozen combinations? I just don't want Infinite getting his hands on one of them again. Or Eggman. Or Scourge, frankly." She cut her eyes towards the back of the sofa. "They just seem to mean bad news no matter who gets their hands on them."
However, Honest knew for a fact that there were literally thousands of prototypes unaccounted for after Forces. Just locking up this one and the original wouldn't get rid of the problem forever. If she wanted to blame someone once something really horrible inevitably happened, she could always blame the whole of the Resistance for destroying the factory containing them all and scattering them literally everywhere. Honest bet the Black Market in the Chao Kindergarten was flooded with them at this point.
"Something really horrible." Pft. Was Honest saying the entire No Zone prison's prisoner population being set free wasn't really horrible? The Black Market was flooded with Phantom Ruby prototypes, and the multiverse was flooded with dangerous criminals. It really seemed as though they were all living in one big Bad Future.
Was locking a few red gems up in a box really going to help all that much?